HEADstart - Guidelines for school leaders
ESHA’s quality cards series HEADstart aims to help school heads with useful professional tips on how to develop and become better leaders of their teams.
Download your own printable copies here.
This card offers suggestions for practical questions like:
- How do I ensure that I keep on learning?
- How do I set a good example as a learning school leader?
This card provides tools for practical questions like:
- How to move my team forward?
- How do I get my teachers excited to learn?
- How do I support?
This card provides tools for practical questions like:
- How can I ensure children’s agency in school?
- How can I support parents to respect their child´s agency?
- How can I ensure all children are able to participate in decision-making regardless of their socio-economical background?
This card provides help in:
- building a frame of reference for structuring the digital transformation of your school;
- understanding the importance of ethics;
- using a value compass in your team.
Practical questions for which this card offers suggestions:
- How do I help teachers participate in making
changes in the educational system? - What does it require in my role of school leader to
make successful changes?
Practical questions for which this card offers suggestions:
- How can we support parents to stimulate their children’s learning?
- How do we use the expertise of parents to stimulate the learning of our students?
- How do we have the right conversation with parents?
Practical questions for which this card offers suggestions:
- How do I stimulate teachers to bring out the best of
themselves? - How do I stimulate teachers to bring out the best of
their students? - How do I stimulate teachers to persist in teaching
the most vulnerable students?
Practical questions for which this card offers suggestions:
- How do I ensure that teachers’ experiments contribute to school development?
- How do I ensure the meaningful participation of teachers in conducting small scale experiments?
- How do I use our teachers’ talents, their experiences and beliefs, knowledge and skills for conducting small scale experiments?
Practical question for which this card offers suggestions:
- What is the role of the educational consultant for improving equity in school?
This card provides suggestions for the following questions:
- How do I make my team interested in using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in school?
- How do I support my team and give guidance on implementing AI in school?

